


Mask On, Mask Off

by Magicath_420



Series: Secret Identity [2]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, I don’t love the sound of that tag but I want this to be findable so I guess, M/M, Secret Identity Fail, Sequel, Wade Wilson hates Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magicath_420/pseuds/Magicath_420
Summary: Sequel to Enchanted.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Series: Secret Identity [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789105
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77





	Mask On, Mask Off

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a year late. I don’t wanna HEAR it.

Peter landed on the roof, stumbling in his haste. 

“Wade, wait.”

“Fuck off.”

“I can explain!”

Wade turned around. “You can _explain_? You can explain why Peter Parker was in your bed, _naked_ , at 5 o’clock in the morning?” 

“Yes, I promise, just- just give me a chance-”

“A chance to come up with a story? Yeah, no thanks. Not interested. See ya never.”

Wade turned to walk away, paused, seemed to change his mind, and then turned back. “You know what’s fucked up, Webs? I actually trusted you. I thought- I mean, at least we were _friends_ , right? I actually thought you would be different.”

“Wade, please-”

“We’re done, Spider. Lose my number.”

Peter could barely think around the three different kinds of panic flooding his system, but he somehow knew that if Wade left the roof, he would never see him again. And that wasn’t an option.

Peter shot a web and caught Wade’s hand. Wade stopped.

“Let me go,” he said, voice dangerously calm. A shiver ran down Peter’s spine; he had forgotten how terrifying Wade was when he was on the other side.

“Just turn around, okay? Just look at me for one second, and if you still want to leave, you can.”

Wade whirled around with murder in the eyes of his mask, but whatever he was going to say died on his lips.

Peter had taken off his mask.

For a solid thirty seconds, neither of them moved. Then, Wade took a cautious step forward.

“I’m not cheating on you, Wade,” Peter started, “I would never, _ever_ do that. I love-”

“Don’t.” Wade said angrily. “I call bullshit. There’s no way you’re him.”

Peter shot another web, this time at a parked car on the street below.

“Anyone could wear those web-shooters.”

Peter flexed his arm and lifted the car a few feet off the ground, then set it back down gently.

“That’s- you could fake that with your billionaire- fucking- whatevers. I’ve seen you and Spider-Man in the same room, Parker.”

“I have a friend who sometimes wears the suit so that-” 

“Well that’s convenient.”

“Yes, Wade, it is!” They were yelling over each other now. “I’ve been guarding my secret identity _with my life_ since I was 15, I have a thousand fail-safes to prevent anyone from finding out. I- I can’t convince you that I’m telling you the truth if you’re committed to-”

Wade pulled out a gun and pointed it at Peter’s head.

“...dis-disbelieving me. Wade, please,” Peter breathed, raising his hands in surrender.

“Disarm me,” Wade said, voice breaking.

Peter didn’t move.

“Spider-Man is the only person I’ve ever met who can take a gun from me. And it’s not because of his webs, or super-human strength, or anything you could have built yourself in your fucking SpaceX lab. It’s just because he’s him.”

“Yes, but I don’t ever _do_ it, because I have to-”

Wade cocked the gun and flexed his finger on the trigger; Peter ducked, grabbed the barrel and flipped over Wade’s shoulder, twisting his wrist just right and bringing the full weight of his body down on it. With a resounding crack, Wade dropped the gun and cried out in pain.

“-break your arm.” Peter finished. He ejected the clip and handed the gun back to Wade.

Wade stared at the gun in his hand for a minute, not meeting Peter’s eyes, mask unreadable.

“I have to go,” he said finally.

“Wade, please don’t-”

“I just-” He took a deep breath. “I just need some time to think, Webs.”

And Peter was left standing alone on the roof.

****

Peter didn’t hear from Wade for a week. The few times he got up the nerve to call him, it went straight to voicemail. It was probably for the better; Peter had no idea what he would say anyway.

It wasn’t too long ago that Peter had sat on top of the Statue of Liberty with Wade and listened to him bitch about Peter Parker as the sun came up over the water. It was Peter’s favorite spot, and Wade’s favorite rant. 

It didn’t bother Peter all that much at the time because Wade hadn’t done his research. Most of his complaints were about money hoarding, drug price hikes, and Parker’s affairs with the college interns, all of which were completely made-up tabloid gossip. Peter made sure his company was run right; he made a middle class salary, paid everyone a fair wage and sold any medicine they manufactured at cost. He’d tried to tell Wade all that, but pretty early on it became clear that Wade didn’t want to hear a word of it, so he just let him talk. 

It had never bothered Peter all that much that Wade hated the man he was out of costume because Wade didn’t _know_ that man. He was just reacting to the culture, and hey, if anything Wade thought was true, Peter would hate himself, too. And when he was in the mask, Wade _knew_ him. Not only, like, biblically, but he knew about the poor kid from Queens who spent his school days getting shoved into lockers. He knew about the spider bite, about waking up one day able to climb up walls. He knew about Uncle Ben, and responsibility, and Harry, and Gwen, and every bad day after. Wade knew the curve of his back and each and every one of his fingers and just how strong he really was. 

Peter wasn’t about to lose that to tabloid gossip and the abstract concept of capitalism.

So eventually, Peter got fed up waiting, and he chased Wade down. It only took Peter a few hours to search Manhattan top to bottom, but Wade knew how to disappear, and right now he didn’t want to be found. So it was only at 2am, after a few fist fights and handshakes and a morally questionable bargain with a bartender, that Peter crawled through a basement window and found Wade sitting on a couch older than he was, in a safe house in Gowanus. 

Wade stood when he heard Peter come in and turned his back on the old box TV playing a re-run of Friends. Peter’s breath caught in his throat; seeing Wade without his mask always made his heart skip a beat, or two, or three. The roughness of his face lit up a sense memory of how the rest of his skin felt against Peter’s, and of how brutal he really was underneath all the sarcasm.

“God, you’re persistent,” Wade said.

“I’m not going to let you just- just vanish on me without even so much as a-”

“Take the mask off.”

“-conversation about- what?”

“You heard me.” Wade stepped forward, smelling faintly of whiskey. “Mask off, Parker. Face me like a man or you can leave the way you came in.”

Peter hesitated for just a second, out of habit, then he pulled his mask off and dropped it on the floor.

Wade walked up to him and grabbed his face roughly with one hand, and for half a second Peter thought he was going to kiss him, but he didn’t. He turned Peter’s face to the side, and back, looking at him in disgust. 

Wade huffed out a breath that might have been a mean laugh in another context. “I always pictured a red head.”

Peter grabbed his hand away, losing patience. “You haven’t let me finish a sentence since I first took my mask off. I deserve a chance to explain myself.”

“Oh, you _deserve_ it, do you?” Wade sneered. “You lied to me for a year-long relationship and now you’re here to tell me what _you_ deserve.”

“That’s not fair, Wade, you always knew I had a secret identity! You _never_ had a problem with it.”

“So it’s _not_ lying to listen to me talk about you to your face without saying anything?”

“What did you want me to say?!”

“How about the truth?”

“It would have put you in danger!”

“I’m fucking immortal, Parker!”

They were both yelling now. Peter took a deep breath.

“They can still hurt you. They can still use _you_ to hurt _me_.”

“It wasn’t your decision to make.”

“Actually, it was. And you knew that it was from the beginning, and you never had a problem with it until now so why don’t you drop this fucking principle thing and tell me why you’re really so angry at me.”

Wade went dangerously still, and for a second Peter hardly dared to breathe.

“I am _angry_ ,” Wade spat, “because you’re a hypocrite. I am angry because you told me that you’re like me, and I believed you. You told me that you’re poor, and you’re broken, and that you do what you do in the mask because you can still smell your uncle’s blood on your fingertips when it rains. And now I find out, after a year, after holding you while you cried, after letting you touch me, now I find out that you’re this- untouchable, straight-laced billionaire that works in a skyscraper that he _owns_.”

“I’m not a billionaire.”

“You own Parker Industries.”

“I make as much money as my secretary does.”

“By choice.”

Peter looked away.

“Men like you don’t love men like me, Parker.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“It’s your name.”

“I’ve told you once before, Wade. My name is Spider-Man. And I _do_ love you.”

“For how long? How long until you get bored playing the starving hero and go back to your penthouse in Midtown?”

That’s when Peter finally lost his temper. He grabbed the front of Wade’s shirt and shoved him up against the wall. 

“I’m not _playing_ anything. I grew up in a one bedroom apartment in Queens, before it was fucking gentrified, and I slept on a Salvation Army futon my entire childhood. My parents died when I was 5 years old and I moved to a school where I got my ass kicked every goddamn day. I didn’t eat lunch _one_ _single_ _day_ in middle school because May and Ben couldn’t afford to give me lunch money on top of the tuition they were paying to put me through all the gifted programs. If you call me wealthy one more time, Wade, I’m going to web you to this fucking wall and leave you to rot.”

“You don’t have to like me, now that you know my real name. But don’t tell me I’m someone else now, just because I wear a suit to my day job. I’m not Tony Stark. And, by the way,” Peter spat, fuming, “I’ve been Spider-Man since I was 15, and I’d let Parker Industries burn to the ground before I even _thought_ about taking off this mask.”

Peter dropped his hands. Wade looked at him for a minute, not saying anything, before slowly walking around him to sit on the back of the couch. He looked out the window.

“Do you remember the night we kissed for the first time?” Wade asked finally. 

Peter sat down next to him, a few feet away, and nodded.

“I asked you what your name was.”

“I told you the truth.”

“‘Spider-Man. Spidey for short. Or Webs.’” Wade quoted. 

“No, I meant the other part.” Peter said, looking up and meeting Wade’s eyes. “You’re my best friend, Wade. You know my name.”

Wade reached out and took Peter’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

“I didn’t know that, about your school lunch,” he said quietly.

“I don’t tell people. I don’t like the way it makes them look at me.”

“Like a victim.” 

Wade understood. Peter nodded anyway.

“So you’re- you’re really you, then. It’s really still you.”

“Still me.”

“And you’re- you’re still mine?”

“What? Yes. Yes, Wade, yes, always yes. Is that- oh my God- is that what you’ve been so upset about?”

Wade shrugged, embarrassed all of a sudden. It was kind of adorable.

“Jesus Christ, Wade, _yes_. I’m still yours. I will always be yours.” Peter got up and stood in front of him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Wade whispered.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I was... scared, I think. Scared of- well, this.”

Wade chuckled and wrapped his arms around Peter’s waist. Peter kissed him, crowding into the space between his legs, trying to get as close to him as possible. God, he had missed Wade.

“You want to go to bed?” Wade mumbled against his lips.

“Yes, but not here. This place is a shithole.”

“Hey, I like this place!”

“There are rats.”

“There are rats everywhere in the city.”

“Yeah, but they’re not even _hiding_. I swear to God, that one wants you to pet it.”

“Well yeah, that’s Scabbers. He’s my favorite.”

“Jesus, you’re such a dork,” Peter said, kissing him again, “C’mon, I’ve got leftover pizza at my place.”

“You’ll make an honest man out of me yet, Webs,” Wade said, “Or, I guess, um- Peter.”

A thrill ran down Peter’s spine, and he shivered.

“That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”

Wade nipped at his bottom lip playfully. “You like it?”

“Yeah, actually.”

Wade stood up; it had never been more apparent that he was a good few inches taller. “You wanna take me home, Peter?”

 _God_. That went straight to Peter’s gut. He nodded breathlessly in response. Wade laughed and kissed him deeply. 

“Oh, this is a fun new trick.”

“As if I could be anymore completely at your mercy.”

“Oh, please.” Wade chuckled. “You think _you’re_ at _my_ mercy? You have so much power over me, Webs, you don’t even know.”

“Well,” Peter said, kissing him again, “You know what I always say about power.” 


End file.
